Reversing a String and Checking for Palindromes

In this lesson you will learn how to reverse a string in Go and check whether it is a palindrome, covering string handling with the rune type. This is for anyone searching for "Go reverse string palindrome check".

To handle characters correctly, convert the string to []rune before reversing. A string that reads the same forwards and backwards is called a palindrome.

The sample code converts the string to a slice of runes with []rune(s) and reverses it by swapping values from both ends towards the middle, then compares with the original. "racecar" comes out the same either way, so it is reported as a palindrome.

A common stumbling block for beginners is that multi-byte characters break when handled as byte-oriented []byte. Being conscious of the difference between bytes, runes, and characters is the first step to handling Go strings correctly.

You will rarely reverse a string in production, but as practice at working through text one character at a time it is a classic learning exercise.

📖 Reference code

package main

import "fmt"

func isPalindrome(s string) bool {
    runes := []rune(s)
    for i, j := 0, len(runes)-1; i < j; i, j = i+1, j-1 {
        runes[i], runes[j] = runes[j], runes[i]
    }
    reversed := string(runes)
    return s == reversed
}

func main() {
    fmt.Println(isPalindrome("racecar"))
    fmt.Println(isPalindrome("hello"))
}

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